Matza

The most important item of the ceremonial of Passover is unleavened bread
called matza; the feast itself is called the feast of the unleavened bread.
Matza is not just one of several equally important other regulations of
the festival of Passover: it is the main ceremonial (together with the
reading of the Haggada), almost the symbol of the chief holiday
of the Israelites. The observing of the command to eat only the unleavened
cakes during the feast of Passover is ordained in the following terms:
For whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the
seventh day, that same shall be cut off from Israel (Exodus 12:
15). The Book of Exodus explains this bread by the command given on the
eve of the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt:

And this day shall be unto
you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout
your generations... Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread. (Exodus
12:14)

After they
left Rameses and came to Succoth,

And they baked unleavened
cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was
not leavened; because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not tarry,
neither had they prepared for themselves any victuals. (Exodus 12:39)

The fact that
the Israelites left Egypt in such a hurry that that night the dough did
not leaven, could hardly be the only motif for a command to which the
religion of Israel affords such importance. The speed of the Exodus from
Egypt was not complemented with the speed of an entry into the Promised
Land, but was followed by forty years of aimless wandering in the desert;
the haste which saved a few hours needed for the dough to leaven was lost
completely in the events of the slow-moving years that followed; the rashness
of the Exodus did not even help the Israelites to run away from the pursuing
Egyptian army and they would have been destroyed were it not for the sea
that parted and let the Israelites pass, only to return then to its strength
and engulf the Egyptian hosts. For its part, the haste of the Exodus could
have been much more aptly remembered by some act symbolizing the haste
of leaving ones domicile or swiftness of retreat, or celebration
of reaching a water barrier and the like; weary loins and the staff of
a wanderer would express better the leaving of Egypt; and if the swift
going away should be symbolized in food, uncooked victuals or eating while
standing could better symbolize the speed than unleavened cakes eaten
in a reclining position, as prescribed by the ritual. And the seven-day-long
observance of eating unleavened bread hardly harmonizes with the explanation
that makes a one-time hurried preparation of bread the motive of it.

The other
explanation of the origin of the custom of eating of matza during Passover
is found in the Haggada read during the Seder, the evening meal of the
first (in diaspora the first two) evenings of the feast. There it is said:
This is the bread of misery that our forefathers ate in Egypt.
This explanation makes matza the replica of the poor bread eaten in the
misery of serfdom. Though less popular, it sounds better rationalized.
A nation that preserves the memory of the long years of affliction may
institute the observance of eatingone week each yearthe bread
of affliction, lakhmo anio. It must, however, be noted that the
replica of the bread of affliction is not made to taste unpleasantly and
is enjoyed by adults and by children alike. There is another symbolic
piece of edibles on the Seder plate, the bitter root, which is supposed
to commemorate the bitterness of the days of bondage; it is eaten, however,
dipped in honey.

The two explanations
contradict each other: according to one of them the unleavened bread was
eaten during the many decades of the sojourn in Egypt where the children
of Israel were subjugated and carried the yoke of bondage; according to
the other explanation this bread was eaten only on the very last night
of the sojourn and possibly not even then, but was, for lack of time,
made in preparation of the suddenly-undertaken migration.

Being contradictory,
the two traditional explanations invite a re-examination of the motives
underlying this ancient usage.

The major
festivals of the Jewish calendar are connected with the memories of the
Exodus, Lawgiving and living in huts during their migration in the desert.Was
not some unusual phenomenon connected with the time of the Exodus of the
Israelites from Egypt that could be regarded as more compelling for the
origin of the custom than the above-stated motives? A usage of such persistence,
predominance and antiquity, must have been instituted, so it seems, to
honor some unusual and impressive occurrence. Such an occurrence was the
fall of manna.

During the
years when the Israelites wandered in the desert after having left Egypt
manna fell from the sky. It served as their nourishment in the years when
they roamed in the wasteland, in the shadow of death, when nothing budded.
The customary explanation of manna as the seed of the tamarisk bush growing
in the desert was refuted in Worlds in Collision, section Ambrosia.
Manna is called the bread of heaven, the bread that fell from
the clouds, (Exodus 16: 4) or even from the starry sky.1
It was found by the Israelites daily in enormous quantities, and the Midrashic
sources state that the quantity that fell every day would have sufficed
to nourish the people for two thousand years.2
It was ground between stones and baked in pans (Exodus 16:14-34), Numbers
11:7-8). It had the shape of coriander seed, a yellowish color and oily
taste.

And the people went round
about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar,
and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it. (Numbers II: 8 )

The fall of
manna was also not confined to the desert of wandering. It is said that
all the peoples of the East and the West could see it.3
And actually we could trace the same memory to many nations of the world.
The Scandinavian peoples were destroyed almost to the last in a catastrophe,
and in the Fimbul winter that followed, the survivors subsisted on the
morning dew.4 The Scriptures
also have it that When the dew fell upon the camp in the night,
the manna fell upon it. (Numbers 11:9) The Greeks preserved the
memory of manna as that of ambrosia—and it is described in the very same
terms as manna. Ambrosia had the taste of oil and barley, or honeycomb;
and so did manna.

It is significant
in this connection that according to old rabbinical sources, matza is
described as having the taste of manna.5
From this alone one could deduce that the custom of eating matza was first
established in memory of the phenomenon of manna—yet, strangely, this
has not yet been done. The fall of manna was a phenomenon of no mean significance.
After the catastrophe of the days of the Exodus and in the years ofits aftermath, the Israelites roaming in the desert had no leaven
and they lacked salt; and until this day the unleavened bread is produced
without salt being added. In the Seder night, when the great miracles
are told that accompanied the Exodus and the upheaval in the physical
nature, the greatest—the fall of bread from the sky—must be especially
honored, it being the food of the multitude that left Egypt, and it would
be strange if it would have remained without a memorial in the main feast
commemorating the deliverance from Egypt and the preservation of the people,
almost brought to complete annihilation by man and by elements alike.

A similar
feast was celebrated in Athens during the spring month of Anthesteriahoney
and flower were poured into a fissure in the earth. And since the phenomenon
of manna was ubiquitous all over the earth, it is of interest and significance
to note that also in India, in the Rig-Veda, it is said that honey
(madhu) comes from the clouds.6

In that book
is described how edible substances precipitated for a long period of time
after the passage of the Earth through the trailing part of the planet
Venus, then a comet.7

The planet
Venus was deified by all races of antiquity and in Worlds in Collision
I brought together reports of its being described as a comet from ancient
Mexico, where it was called la estrella que humeava, the
star that smoked,8
from Babylon, from China and from many other lands and peoples. Manna
was a derivative of Venus. To eat it was like eating a portion of the
god. Many ancient religions had this mystery of swallowing the god. The
Christian religion, too, in the mystery of communion, had the participants
eating of their god. Here it is shown how this strange idea originated;
it was an element of ancient mysteries that were inherited and then incorporated
in the Christian faith. The eating of the body of the god, the miracle
of food falling from the sky, the food that sustained life in the wanderers
in the desert—these are the wonders that impressed the ancient world and
that survived in the ancient cult of matza, and also in the bread of communion,
and in the custom of offering cakes to the Queen of Heaven in ancient
pre-exilic Israel.

There must
have been a special reason why the cakes of unleavened bread should not
be implicitly connected with manna. It appears that these cakes became
a part of an astral worship. It transpired to the instructed priests of
the northern kindgorn of Israel that it was the planet Venus that was
an instrument, or as they may also have thought, the cause of the disturbances
and upheaval that enabled the Israelite slaves to leave Egypt. In the
northern kingdom Jeroboam, by erecting an image of a calf in the temple
of Dan and another in Beth-el, said here are the gods that brought
you out of Egypt and he initiated the Passover service in Dan which
in his plan should have served as the gathering place for the Passover
week, not only for the population of the northern kingdom, but also for
the people of Judah. Thus we see that Passover was a feast also in the
worship of Baal; and in Worlds in Collision we have shown that
the calf was the image of the planet Venus and that Baal was also her
name.

At the end
of the sixth century before the present era, shortly before the Babylonian
Exile, Jeremiah accused the population of Jerusalem: The women knead
dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven, that they may provoke me to
anger. (7:18) The Queen of Heaven, we are informed by many authorities,
was the planet Venus. Apparently the knowledge that Venus had something
to do with the Exodus made the people of the Northern Kingdom, that of
Israel, and then also of Judah, to bake cakes in honor of Venus, the planet,
the role of which in the catastrophe of the days of the Exodus is described
in detail in Worlds in Collision. And when Jerusalem fell to the
Babylonians, the Jews who escaped to Egypt spoke of the incense and offerings
that were given to the queen of heaven by themselves, and also by their
fathers, their kings, and their princes in the cities of Judah,
and in the streets of Jerusalem. And when we burned incense
to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we
make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her without
our men?(44:19)

The heavenly
bread coming from the clouds that were deposited by the comet Venus, the
cakes made by the women of Jerusalem to her honor, were in memory and
in thankfulness for the miracle she performed for their ancestors: Therefore
the women of Jerusalem regarded the prohibition of this usage by the king
Josiah and probably also by his son Zedekiah, under the influence of Jeremiah,
as an offense for which their temple was destroyed; they went into refuge
in Egypt, when the other remnants of the people were carried into Exile
in Babylonia.

The custom
of bringing bread (flour) and honey to the queen of heaven was practiced
also by the Syrians in the second century before the present era, as Lucian
tells in his book De Dea Syria. And in Greece, on the spring feast
of libations of flour and honey were poured into a crevice in the ground,
in memory of the flood of Deukalion, in which the population of Greece
was destroyed almost to the last; this flood of Deukalion, according to
tradition conserved by the fathers of the Church, occurred in the days
of the Exodus (Eusebius)

Also in the
Western Hemisphere the spring feast in honor of Quetzalcoatl or the planet
Venus was observed once in eight yearsevery eight yers the planet
Venus presently returns to the same position in relation to the sun and
the earththe synodic cycle of Venus consists of eight terrestrial
years. Venus years were rigorously observed by the Mayas in Yucatan, Aztecs
in Mexico, and Incas in Peru.

During the
feast of in honor of Venus, bread was baked without salt, with water aloneand
Sahagun, the Spanish author who studied the life of the Mayas in the sixteenth
century, wrote:

Every eighth year these
natives celebrated a feast which they called Atamalqualiztli, which
means feast of bread and water. For eight days preceding
the festival they ate nothing but tamales prepared without salt, nor
did they drink anything else but clear water. ... They did not mix anything
else with the dough of which they make them (tamali) not even salt...9

Here we see
the feast of unleavened bread in America dedicated to Venus and was observed
on its every return on its synodical cycle. Among the Mayas the feast
of the bread was dedicated to the planet Venus, as it was among the women
of Jerusalem in the days of Jeremiah and before him.

The word matza
may mean to find; the corn of heaven was actually found on
the ground.

The people
of Israel in gratitude for their salvation in the desert, amidst the outraged
elements, in a desert clouded by twilight, burning and waterless, observe
the feast of salvation and eat the unleavened bread.

The connection
by the people of Judea in the days of Jeremiah of manna and matza with
Venus contributed to the separation between the custom and its cause,
when religion became a monotheistic form of Judaism. Thus the root of
the custom was lost and other explanations were devised and survived for
many centuries, despite their obvious inadequacy.

References

Psalms
78:23-24; Tractate Yorna 75a.

Midrash
Tehillim to Psalm 23; Tosefta Sota 4.3.

Tractate
Yorna 76a.

J.
A. MacCulloch, Eddic Mythology (1930), p. 168.

Kiddushin
38a.

W.H.
Roscher, Nektar und Ambrosia, (Leipzig, 1883), p. 19.

[The
synthesis of various edible carbohydrates and sugars from hydrocarbons
by bacterial action, or from other, simpler compounds by chemical
reaction aided by strong irradiation has been demonstrated experimentally.
For instance, see A. J. Swallow, Radiation Chemistry of Organic
Compounds (Oxford, 1960). V. A. Firsoff (Our Neighboring
Worlds [1954], p. 208) described how formaldehyde could be produced
from water vapor and carbon dioxide in the presence of strong ultraviolet
radiation. From formaldehyde sugars, like fructose or glucose, and
starches can be produced. See Wong Kee Kuong, The Synthesis
of Manna, Pensée III (1973), pp. 45-46. Carbon
dioxide is a major constituent of Venus atmosphere.]